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On target: the players with the most goals scored in a single Premier League season

With the Premier League coming up to its 30th season, the league has seen some incredible strikers over the years. While a certain Manchester City forward could be on track to beat several records this campaign, here is the list of the top three most goals scored in a single Premier League season.

Andy Cole (Newcastle, 1993-94) - 34 goals

Cole joined Newcastle from Bristol City in March 1993 for a fee of around £2.3m and made an instant impact on Tyneside. His 34 goals in 40 league appearances included several stellar performances across the 1993-94 campaign. Cole scored hat-tricks in a 3-0 demolition of Liverpool as well as a 4-0 thrashing of Coventry City, along with braces against Man City, Oldham, West Ham and Sheffield United.

His contributions would see Newcastle finish the season in third, which is where they sat in 2022-23 at the turn of the international break. As a result, the Magpies have Premier League odds of 11/10 to secure a top-four finish this season for the first time in 20 years. While Callum Wilson is doing his best to replicate Cole's form this campaign, he will have some way to beat it. The legendary striker's tally of 34 - which famously included very few penalties - is a joint record for the English top flight, and saw him secure a blockbuster move to Man United the following season.


Alan Shearer (Blackburn, 1994-95) - 34 goals

Now more famous for his punditry on BBC, Alan Shearer is an undisputed Premier League legend and arguably the greatest striker to ever grace England's top division. He is the league's leading ever goalscorer with 260 goals in 441 top-flight appearances and holds the record with Andy Cole for most goals scored in a Premier League season. His dominant displays in 1994-95 helped Blackburn to a historic triumph.

Rovers remain to this day just the seventh team to win the Premier League, which has been dominated by the likes of Man Utd and more recently Man City. In that campaign, Shearer scored hattricks against QPR, West Ham and Ipswich, along with four braces recorded against Everton, Aston Villa, Southampton and Arsenal. Unlike Cole, Shearer didn't secure a move straight off the back of his stellar performances, although he did eventually join Newcastle in July 1996 where he stayed for ten years before announcing his retirement.

Mohamed Salah (Liverpool, 2017-18) - 32 goals

A more recent entry on this list saw Mo Salah place third in the list of all-time Premier League scorers. In what was only his first season at Liverpool after signing from Roma, Salah scored a staggering 32 goals in 36 games and totalled a whopping 44 goals in 52 appearances across all competitions. Unfortunately for Salah, his displays were unable to secure Liverpool Champions League glory after defeat in the final to Madrid, and the Reds finished a disappointing fourth in the league too.

Nevertheless, failures at team level cannot underplay Salah's individual brilliance in the 2017-18 Premier League season. The Egyptian King scored four goals in a 5-0 drubbing of Watford in mid-March, along with an impressive five braces against West Ham, Southampton, Stoke, Leicester and Tottenham. On top of these figures, Salah also provided ten assists in the league, meaning Liverpool would have been lost without the efforts of their new star man.


Notable mentions close to this top three include Luis Suarez, Cristiano Ronaldo and Shearer's other two seasons with Blackburn. Given that top Premier League teams in the modern era tend to spread the goals more between a host of offensive players, it remains to be seen whether a single forward will be able to enter these scoring charts anytime soon.
Created: 30 November 2022

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